NET+ Box Community Summit Recap

Twenty universities from around the country gathered at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, Penn., on June 1 and 2 for the first NET+ Box community summit. The summit included a half-day of product updates from the Box team and a full-day of community conversation and presentations.

Throughout the event there were some great conversations among attendees about the challenges, successes, and plans with Box. Every school gave a brief presentation around their Box implementation. From schools just rolling Box out to longtime customers of Box, participants all found something of value in what was shared in those talks and in the informal networking that took place over the course of the two days.

Some interesting discussions and topics included:

Review of the Box product roadmap and new features, including: Box Drive and the new Box UI.

Insights and input into Box's ongoing efforts to align documentation and communication for product and feature releases.

Valuable discussion with the Box Platform team about the app user model that could make development much easier for a broader range of our users.

Usage states at various campuses. For example, PhD users are largest in terms of storage at CMU while also being the smallest student population.

Community sourcing resources for IT help desks.

Ongoing work needed around integration with learning management systems.

Use of Non-person departmental accounts.

Processes for deprovisioning of students.

Encouragement to provision all users and not an opt-in model.

NET+ Box advisory board has been looking at ways to increase in-person community conversations over the years. Advisory board members Shlomo Balass and Bob Flynn fleshed out the idea of the community summit while on a hike on Angel Island after BoxWorks last year. After that, members of the advisory board, the Box team, and staff at CMU all came together to put on this event. Ultimately, schools from all across the country attended, all finding value in the gathering and vowing to try and return next year. Plans are to hold the summit in conjunction with the advisory board's summer meeting. Once that location and date are set, notification to subscribers will be sent out to save the date.

Presentations and other materials from the summit are available to the NET+ Box program subscribers via links in the Internet2 community forum. The NET+ Box community forum is also the best way to learn about events and program updates. If you do not have access to the forum or are interested in learning more about how to join the NET+ Box program, please contact netplus@internet2.edu.